Life? Vids? Ships? Typing? Gaming?

[beccatoria]

So, it's been like, a week since I posted, which is...silly. But honestly, nothing much has happened. I went back to work, which kind of sucked, but not so much as either being broke or having to work full-time, and I console myself with the knowledge that yes, I am actually paid to sit there and type as fast as a robot. (One day I'm gonna clock my typing speed again; I totally think I can break 100wpm now, my last temp test had me at 88, but the copy-typing sheet fell off the stand in the middle of the test, so I had to stop, bend down, pick it up and reattach it (which was fiddly) right in the middle. Plus that was before 8 months of going to work and typing like a machine.)

Things that have been happening in my life that you may or may not care about:

- OMGZ my D&D game is reaching the final big showdown after like, five years of playing. This is v. exciting. My law-abiding, chaos-worshipping (because what's the point in having faith in something that makes sense? That's just logic!) paladin has the hilarious choice of either doing what her chaotic god wants her to do and maintain the order of the multiverse, or let the lawful god win and plunge everything into mayhem. Also there might be a fight. And a giant cat-tiger man with wings. And a robot who looks like Lucy Lawless and has reincarnation and reproductive issues that Kev made up before Xena ever showed up on BSG. Though currently said robot is being held captive by an ex-pacifist squid-creature that we might have accidentally cursed with 10,000 lost and cursed swords that we agreed to dispose of. AND LET THAT BE A LESSON AGAINST THE DANGERS OF DUMPING YOUR WASTE INTO THE OCEAN. Also in this game I am married to a realtor.

- VIDS. It might be a while before I post something but that's only cus I'm working on something big. I could say more, but I'd have to kill you. Or possibly someone would declare war on me. And that was totally my plan. Um. The point is, I'm vidding loads which is half of why I'm not here, but it's...not exactly secret, but will pack more punch if I don't go on about it loads until it's done. So I shalln't.

- SHIPS? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what the hell has happened, but I appear to have acquired a new 'ship. *glances at icon, courtesy of frolicndetour* I should clarify, I don't ship Tory/Cally. I ship Tory/Cylon!Cally. I blame a combination of frolicndetour, merrykk, the stories both of them wrote and feminism. SRSLY. TORY/CYLON!CALLY, providing disgruntled straight girls with girlslash goggles since 2009 (before that it was down to Laura to provide them, often with the help of her teaching assistant).

Now, I know what you're all saying. Well, okay, I probably don't, but I'm going to pretend I do. You're all saying, "But Becka, you don't even like Cally all that much. In fact, I distinctly remember you thinking that Cally would be a shitty choice for the fifth..."

And this is true. But then 4.5 happened and I understood the five's backstory and I would like to point out a number of awesome things that are awesome if it is Cally, not Chief who is a Cylon:

1) Better robot gender balance.
2) No Nicky retcon.
3) They can't make both of their robot women into sexist cliches! Wait *glances at other robot women* It's at least less likely.
4) WHUT, some actual female bonding on this show?!
5) I honestly think that minus the homicide, the relationship between Tory and Cally could have been fascinating. Neither of them is a particularly empathetic character, both are vicious in their own ways, specifically about whichever "family" they owe loyalty to at that point in time, and further, at the start of S4, both of them are increasingly isolated and want a place to belong.
6) Come ON, watching Cally deal with being a Cylon? With all her hatred of them? From a character perspective, rather than a show-wide perspective, she's actually a really interesting choice. (Though I concede that from a show-wide perspective she kind of lacks oomph, but then, so did all the others, individually.)

(There's also a part of me intrigued by the possibility that Cally is the fifth instead of Ellen, but didn't wake up in Crossroads cus she was drugged up. Then when Tory kills her she resurrects on the baseship. This means that Nicky isn't challenging to Hera's hybridity because he's a pure cylon like Liam. We lose out on Ellen's amazing relationship with Cavil, but equally she's not going to come back and cause all kinds of FAIL to break loose and seeing CALLY try to embrace her son, Al from Quantum Leap and also have to deal with trying to reconcile her newfound love of Boomer with her hatred of her from her mortal life would almost make up for that. In this scenario, obviously Cally was a bitter child genius lab assistance and protege of Tory... But equally that leaves less room for hilarious IN YOUR FACE GENDERFAIL! romance between Tory and Cally as, um, airlocking obviously still happens. Plus then we'd still end up with the same number of GIRLZ and we want more of them. So sorry Chief, you are the weakest cylon, GOODBYE.)

Um...

That's the end of my weird update.

Comments

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I feel so bad for you that you have to miss it and can't play! It's just a rewarding and awesome hobby if you have a good group and a good GM. And unlike television, your favourite characters don't get horrifyingly shafted and you can control the story. There's something powerful about that. The downside is that the people who can share those stories with you is a lot smaller, but...eventually you really do end up with a group of people who share these collaborative stories and they become like...personal myths, with personal iconic characters and stuff?

And...um, insane crap as mentioned above.

If you're ever down in my general area, you should totally join us for a game!

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Yep. We used to play a lot when we were younger, my old group of school friends. There wasn't much to do out here, so we found this way of making our own stories up.

But people move away and drop out of your life. And now of that old group of friends I just have Scott and Georgina, and we used to play a bit just the three of us. But three players is really one too few for rpgs to work I find?

Tried to do gaming online for a while, but it didn't really work. The pace was too slow.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get that, same thing happened to us; our gaming group has shrunk from like...7 to 3 or something due to stuff like that. Though we are lucky in that we have a few other people in the area now we can corral into our crazy games.

I do think that 4 - 5 is the best size but 3 can totally work if you have a good group who enjoy gaming together and putting in the effort. You have to scale things down sometimes, or the GM has to put in more effort and give you a few NPCs, but...in some ways, at least you know who you can count on to keep up with the game?

This game is actually really exciting to be finishing because it was one we started back when our most recent fourth player, Danny, ditched on us and we thought it would just be a small game for a while to tide us over, but...as he left us completely it turned into this crazy epic tale, just the three of us making it up together, which now holds a lot of meaning for all of us, because it was told during some very difficult times in all our lives, when we lost a lot of people and equilibrium?

Currently we're really not gaming much at all, just because of how Kev's doing right now, but we're so close to the end of this game, like...one or two games away, that he decided he really wanted to pull it together, finish it and...send it out properly.

I'm really glad we're doing it. It feels right.

But yes, three is a very unwieldy number unless you all know and trust each other a lot.

I don't like online gaming so much either for much the same reasons, though I did it for a while too when I didn't have an RL group.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

It sounds fun, how long has your campaign been going on for?

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

About four years but we haven't been playing fulltime that whole time - there've been long hiatuses when we've been living in different cities or even different continents so it's hard to tell how long it would have taken us otherwise?